Introduction
Every day, all the incoming and outgoing interactions that organizations make – letters, emails, faxes, documents, form submissions, and more – come under the umbrella of correspondence. document management BPM is important for all types of organizations, government agencies, and other businesses.
It helps organizations to proficiently manage business correspondence, which increases efficiency, productivity, and security. Moreover, it is also crucial to ensure regulatory compliance.
Over the years, correspondence management has greatly improved with new emerging technologies. Today, organizations are able to centralize and automate correspondence handling with the right set of tools and approaches. One such effective approach is using BPM (business process management) tool. Therefore, this guide is going to talk in detail about document management and BPM for effective correspondence handling.
What is correspondence management? A quick overview
Correspondence management is a process of receiving, recording, processing, responding, and creating an audit trail of all incoming and outgoing correspondence.
For example, suppose an organization receives letters, faxes, emails, and other forms of communication from various sources, such as partners, customers, stakeholders, and regulatory bodies. So, managing all those documents and creating a track record is what correspondence management is all about.
A correspondence management system helps to centralize and streamline the process of correspondence handling. It gives organizations a unified platform to manage communication channels and establish customized procedures to handle incoming and outgoing correspondence. Now, let’s talk about implementing the correspondence management system with BPM.
The modernized way of correspondence handling with BPM
Correspondence management requires a systematic and strategic approach to handling incoming and outgoing interactions. This is exactly what BPM tools can offer to organizations.
BPM (Business Process Management) is a process management and automation tool. It empowers organizations to design, model, automate, execute, and improve business processes to bring automation and streamline processes.
BPM can facilitate correspondence management in all stages, from receiving and recording to processing and responding to incoming/outgoing interactions. Let’s now dive deep into the role of BPM in document management and seamless correspondence handling.
1. Process automation for the reception and distribution of documents
Organizations usually have a large flow of incoming documents, whether in the form of letters, faxes, emails, etc. Managing all those inflows manually is no longer an effective approach. With the BPM tool, organizations automate the process of reception and distribution of documents. Let’s understand this with the help of an example.
Consider that your organization receives a high volume of emails related to customer inquiries, service requests, shipment details, and other correspondence. Your organization wants to automate the reception process so that emails are sorted and forwarded to relevant bodies autonomously. This is where BPM tool like Qflow comes into action.
Qflow BPM software allows you to design workflows that intelligently sort incoming emails according to predefined checkmarks, like content type, keywords, etc. Furthermore, it can smartly route emails to relevant departments, such as customer queries to the customer support team or service requests to the design team.
BPM tool can also extract relevant information from incoming emails and log the details. Besides that, BPM is also capable of classifying other documents and routing them automatically. In short, integrating BPM into the reception and distribution of documents reduces manual work and error and streamlines the process.
2. Response to documents with right time management
After receiving and routing documents, the next stage in correspondence handling is responding to documents. Here again, the BPM tool brings the automation that organizations need.
Qflow BPM tool allows organizations to define rules and design workflows to respond to documents timely and efficiently. As some documents require a standard response, a BPM can store a predefined template and respond without any human involvement. For example, if your organization receives frequent emails about product availability, the BPM tool can reply to those queries autonomously with predefined information.
Other than automated responses, BPM can facilitate efficient response time management. It can escalate important pending responses or issues with predefined rules. For example, crucial customer issues or important supplier messages can trigger relevant workflows and urge the team to take action immediately. This way, relevant teams can respond to their high-priority documents/messages in a timely manner.
Overall, BPM streamlines the process of responding in correspondence management. This saves significant time, triggers productivity, and ensures satisfactory customers, vendors, and stakeholders. On top of that, BPM also provides valuable analytics that can help pinpoint areas of improvement and improve response time and processes.
3. Efficient correspondence management with evolving electronic communication
Traditional paper-based documentation is gradually being replaced with electronic means due to global digitalization. The integration of electronic communication platforms facilitates the transition from traditional correspondence to electronic means, promoting accessibility, transparency, and minimizing errors.
The BPM tool facilitates evolving correspondence management due to its ability to integrate with various electronic communication platforms. It can process documents from various traditional and electronic communication channels, such as emails, letters, web forms, faxes, and more. This makes the BPM tool ideal for efficient correspondence management with evolving electronic communication.
4. Comprehensive audit trail
The audit trail is another important aspect of correspondence management. BPM not only centralizes all business correspondence but also creates a comprehensive audit trail of all the activities. This makes correspondence transparent and also helps to fulfill regulatory compliance.
Conclusion
Correspondence management is essential for day-to-day activities for almost all organizations. However, the evolving business operations need modernized ways to handle correspondence, which is exactly what BPM tools offer.
As discussed in this guide, document management with the BPM tool helps automate receiving, recording, processing, responding, and creating an audit trail of all incoming and outgoing correspondence. Therefore, we will wrap up the discussion by recommending organizations implement BPM-based workflows and improve efficiency, productivity, and regulatory compliance.
